An undertaking on the huge cost of funerals
The topic might seem a little grisly in this emerging season of peace and goodwill, but fundamentally, this is a grave matter in all senses of the word, and I have to do my duty. And there is good news too.
I learn from reliable sources, for example, that cost-aware families and relatives are already shopping around when they need the services of an undertaker. That is good news indeed, and I suppose that demand is imposing some kind of muted cut-price pressure on our undertaking brethren.
The new trend of shopping around appears to have already taken a strong hold, especially in Cork, areas of Kerry and Tipperary, and is growing.
No longer, it seems, can the two or three local undertakers in any town assume that any local passing is certain to mean business for one or other of them. I’m told of undertakers packing lunches and travelling long distances to funerals, because they had offered better prices than the locals. So there are the healthy beginnings of a cut-price war between undertakers developing already.
One comment, I assume from an undertaker, mentioned that there is another reality in the trade nowadays. A certain percentage of us, it appears, are nowadays being buried free of charge by members of the trade, because of family circumstances involved. I think this is true, and maybe was always true to some extent, and I’m glad to mention that aspect of the undertakers’ humanity, and compassion as well.
You can be certain too, however, as in every trade and profession, that there are examples of overcharging as well. That’s human nature.
There were many lighthearted comments, and I just have to record one of these. It came from Derry McCarthy in Cork, and he wrote, “Inform your readers I have a brother-in-law in the business that has started the ball rolling. He is currently making a fantastic offer on a once-off basis.
“He is offering the VAT back to everyone who books a funeral with him now, and promises to enclose a cheque in the casket for each lucky participant!”
There is an example of the kind of special offer where you need to read all the small print.
Again, apologies to anyone currently in the throes of dealing with a bereavement. I am remembering a yarn I heard many years ago in Co Westmeath. A veteran garda told me that, in very hard times, a century ago, some of the travelling people would avoid the services of an undertaker altogether, and simply bury their dead in the dead of night in a local graveyard. They could not afford a coffin, so the deceased was simply wrapped in a sheet.
The garda told me he knew of a hillside graveyard where an old Connemara Traveller man had been buried this way. He claimed that in September, when the sweeping evening sun seem to x-ray the earth below, you could sometimes see the figure of the wanderer lying on his back with outflung arms. This was because the grasses and little flowers and herbs from his old wild body were from the rocky lands of Connemara, and sharply different in shade to the more lush grasses and flowers of Co Westmeath.
There is a truth about that story. I promise I won’t venture into this territory again, until after the death and burial of this old year.
